


Passenger Seat

by StrangerWriter



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Hopper being a dad, Mileven
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-10-21 10:57:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17641469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrangerWriter/pseuds/StrangerWriter
Summary: Hopper returns to the Byers house with an exhausted El after closing the gate.





	1. Chapter 1

Just as fast as Hopper can reach the passenger door, the Wheeler kid is already in front of him opening it. “Is she okay?” Mike demands, when he doesn’t immediately see her move.

“She’s alright, she’s alright,” Hopper repeats, pushing him out of the way. He slides his arm under her legs and his other behind her back to pick her up. “She’s just exhausted,” he states mostly for the kid’s benefit, but also trying to convince himself that that is all that’s wrong with her.  She hasn’t really been conscious since collapsing immediately after closing the gate, but he saw how much energy it took out of her, so he figured this must be normal.

The other kids weren’t too far behind all clamoring to see her too. “Just back up, she’s just really drained,” Mike tells the others, forcing them out of Hopper’s way before he has the chance to. Hopper looks for some place clean to lay her down at, but the couch hasn’t been fully cleaned of the broken glass yet.

“In here,” Mike tells him, gesturing down the hallway to Joyce’s bedroom.

Hopper attempts to lay El down, but she whines, pressing her face into his chest; it’s her first conscious move since leaving the elevator. “It’s okay kid, it’s okay,” he tells her, instead sitting down on the edge of the bed not letting go of her.

The kids all crowd around until Mike yells at them all to seriously “just give her some space.”

When the others reluctantly leave the room, Hopper looks to the Wheeler kid, who he can tell isn’t about to leave her side. “Go get a cloth and something to clean her up, will ya?” he instructs instead. 

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Mike agrees rushing out of the room.

“Mike,” Hopper hears softly from his arms when El finally realizes where she is.

“Yeah, he’s here,” Hopper answers in confirmation with a sigh.

Mike is back in record time with a wet washcloth and a hand towel. Hopper attempts to adjust El so that he can at least see her face, but she cries out again, turning her face back towards his body.

“I think it’s the lights,” Mike senses, immediately flipping the switch on the wall to turn them off. The room is now dimly lit by only the light escaping in from the hallway.

El sighs, relaxing a bit when the room goes dark and Hopper realizes that the damn kid was right. Hopper tries again and successfully lays her down on the bed. He starts to wipe the blood off her face, and Mike removes her shoes. It takes a few minutes for Hopper to thoroughly clean her face and hands of blood and the black smudges under her eyes, but eventually he’s satisfied. Mike is sitting on the edge of the bed, and Hopper notices that his hand never leaves her leg.

When Hopper stops touching El, she forces her eyes open. “All clean, kiddo,” he tells her, though his hand finds her forehead again. “How are you feeling?”

“Bad,” she whispers. Her voice is hoarse and quiet. Before Hopper has a chance to respond, in her next breath, she asks for him. “Mike?”

“I’m here El,” Mike promises, squeezing her leg. He was obstructed by Hopper, but now that she sees him, Hopper catches that the edge of her lips curl into a slight smile, like she can’t help it, no matter how terrible she was feeling.

Hopper audibly sighs in annoyance. “You need to sleep,” he instructs, and El nods in agreement, curling her face towards his hand.

“Don’t go,” she whispers to neither of the two in particular, but Hopper could guess who she meant it for.

And, hell, the exhaustion was settling in for him too.

El curled up on her side, nuzzling closer to Hopper. Mike noticed the way El was with him and it softened his anger at the Chief just a little bit. She was obviously comfortable with him, despite the fact that he had lied to her and kept her from all of her friends for so long. But if El could forgive him, maybe he could to. _Maybe_ , Mike thinks.

Mike was tired also, but he wasn’t going to leave El alone until Hopper forced him to.

And in the next second, there is another kid, the older one, standing in the doorway. “It’s for you,” Steve says, holding the telephone in his hand. Hopper examines his face briefly wondering why in the hell the kid was always beat up and bloody every time he saw him, but he doesn’t care enough to ask.  

Hopper goes into the hallway to take the call, and Mike hears it end with a frustrated, “yeah, yeah. I’ll be there.”

Hopper reenters the room and practically rolls his eyes at the clear anticipation coming from the kid.

Not his kid. The other kid. His kid is now covered up under the blankets, and Mike is sitting up on the other side of her.

“I have to go back to the lab, take care of some things,” he speaks quietly to the boy. Hopper shakes his head and rolls his eyes, knowing what’s coming next. “Yes, you can stay with her, but you stay where you are, here, on _top_ of the blankets,” he gestures. Mike shoots him a _what do you think we are going to do_ look, but Hopper ignores it, not caring. “And she has to sleep,” he adds.

“I know. I’ll take care of her,” the boy says earnestly.

Hopper sighs audibly. “Yeah, yeah. Just… I’ll be back soon,” he tells him.

El wasn’t sleeping just yet, even though her eyes were pressed closed. “Love you,” she mumbles realizing that Hopper was leaving.

“What was that?” Hopper asks, turning back towards the bed.

“I love you,” El enunciates a little clearer.

This day had been emotionally exhausting enough, but to hear those words come out of her mouth, words that he’s pretty sure she’s never said to anybody in her life, meant everything to him. He kneels next to the bed and bends down to press his lips to her forehead. “Love you too kid. I’ll be back soon okay?”

“’Kay,” she whispers.

And though Hopper doesn’t know it yet, this is just one of the first times that he would have to leave her entrusted in the Wheeler boy’s care.


	2. Chapter 2

Hopper gives an exhausted sigh as he closes the front door with a soft click. There are kids upon kids all piled up asleep in the living room. He really doesn’t want to deal with a single one of them, so he quietly makes his way down the hallway. He stops in Joyce’s doorway and sees his kid still safe and sound, sleeping practically on top of the damn boy. Thankfully, that kid is asleep too.

He decides to leave them alone and checks the other bedrooms for somewhere to sleep. Joyce has Will wrapped in her arms in his bedroom, and Jonathan and Nancy are passed out in Jonathan’s bed. Hopper makes his way back to Joyce’s room, and considers kicking Mike out to the living room with everyone else, but when he sees how peaceful El is sleeping, he doesn’t have the heart to. The two kids are so close that they are sharing one pillow, so he slides the other pillow off the bed and throws it down on the floor. He’s so exhausted that despite being on the hard floor with only so much as a pillow under his head, he’s asleep nearly the second he lays down.

He wakes up hours later to hear El having a coughing fit. When she finally quiets down, he hears the other kid.

“Are you alright?”

Their voices are soft, but he can hear every word from his spot on the floor. He isn’t sure if they know he’s there or not, and for whatever reason, he doesn’t make it obvious for them.

“I’m okay,” El replies. Her voice is still raspy, and Hopper is sure that her screams from the night before will be forever burned in his memory.

He hears the blankets shifting around and thinks they might be getting up, but they don’t.

“You can go back to sleep if you are still tired,” Mike says.

El doesn’t respond, but instead says, “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too El. I thought about you all the time. All the time,” he repeats.

Ugh. What’s with these two?

“Do you like her?” El sniffles after a minute.

“What?”

“The other girl. Do you like her?”

“The other girl that’s here? Max?”

El nods.

“What? Ew, no!”

Hopper can’t see his face, but he can hear the panic so clearly that it’s almost comical.

“No I don’t like her. I mean, as a friend. She’s kind of nice for a friend. But that’s all,” Mike insists.

“I saw you with her. At school,” El explains.

“When? You came to the school? Was it like just a few days ago?”

“Yes.” She’s staring at Mike with such intensity that it makes it him nervous.

“El, I knew it. I knew you were there! She was skateboarding right?”

El nods.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” You can hear the pain in the kid’s voice when he asks it; it’s the same question he asked her earlier that night.

“I wasn’t supposed to be there,” El excuses. It wasn’t a complete lie.

Now Hopper understands why she was so upset when she got home that night. If he hadn’t been so pissed off, maybe he could have gotten that little bit out of her before they both flew off the handle. After all, he knew firsthand how much jealousy could hurt. He was going to have to try to work harder on his patience with her.

“Hopper wouldn’t let you, right?” Mike mumbles.

“It’s not safe.”

“I don’t care what he says, I’m not going to not see you again.”

 _Ha_. He wonders if the kid would make the same bold statement if he knew that he was listening.

El is quiet.

“You’ve really been living with him for a year?” Mike questions, trying to steer the conversation away from Max.

“Mm-hm,” she answers. She’s growing tired again, so she lays down and curls back up next to Mike. He pulls the blankets back up over them and protectively wraps his arms around her shoulders.

“I’m sorry. That must be…” Mike struggles to think of the right word.

El giggles. “It’s not bad. Sometimes he’s stupid. And sometimes I’m a brat,” she tells him with a smile.

“You are not a brat,” Mike insists.

“No. I can be,” El replies. “I broke all our windows.”

Mike laughs this time. “Wow, that’s uh, impressive.”

“And I told him that he was like Papa.” Her voice is softer now. “I shouldn’t have said that. He’s not like Papa.”

“I’m sure he knows that,” Mike comforts her.

El sniffles, and Hopper thinks that she might be crying.

“El, hey, it’s okay. He knows that, okay?”

El barely even has enough energy in her to cry, so her tears don’t last long. She takes a shaky breath, and Hopper hears the blankets move around some more.  She wants to tell Mike about her mama and her sister, but she’s so tired that she can’t help but close her eyes.

After a few minutes of quiet, El whispers sleepily, “Do you promise that she’s just a friend?”

Poor kid can’t let it go.

“Yes El, I promise. She’s a friend like Dustin is my friend. And well, I don’t even like her as much as him,” Mike laughs nervously before he adds, “And anyway, she really likes Lucas.”

A promise.

That’s all it takes for El to feel much better. She drifts off to sleep in a matter of seconds.

Hopper is almost asleep again too when he hears the boys voice, though he finds himself wishing that he didn’t.

“I love you El.”

 _Patience_. These kids were really going to test every single bit of his patience.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is 3-15, so Happy Mileven Day everybody!  
> And if you aren't reading this on 3-15, I believe that really any day can be Mileven day :)

It’s a few hours later when Hopper wakes up to soft voices talking.

Mike and El hear Dustin laughing loudly from the living room.

“Sounds like everyone else is awake. Do you want to get up?” Mike asks.

El only sighs in response.

The bed was so nice and warm.

And then there was Mike.

Close to her.

 _Touching_ her.

She felt happy for the first time in a long time. Not just halfway happy, but all the way happy. She wonders why she’d felt so afraid of the bad men for this long. If she knew it’d be as simple as walking into Joyce and Will’s house when Mike was there, she would have done it months ago.

“Do you?” she finally asks, looking up at him.

“Not really,” Mike admits softly.

El curls up on his chest again. Mike’s thumb slowly strokes her arm and her eyes close. She’s not really that tired anymore, but she feels so relaxed, and she doesn’t ever want him to stop touching her.

“El?”

“Yes?”

“What happened that night at the school? Where did you go?” His voice is soft and hesitant, because he wonders if she maybe doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Upside Down,” El answers with a shrug. “When I got out, everyone was gone.”

“Did you come to my house that night? I mean, after you got out?”

“Yes,” she replies, remembering the pain in his face when she saw him that night through the window.

“But they never found you.”

“No. I stayed in the woods.”

“How- how did you end up with Hopper?” It didn’t make sense to him why Hopper of all people would decide to hide her. He didn’t even know her before that night.

“I saw him leaving me food,” she explains, but doesn’t elaborate.

“Hopper was bringing you food in the woods?”

El nods in confirmation. “It was snowing and cold, so I followed him one night.”

Mike hates hearing her talk about living outside like she was a stray dog. He doesn’t respond right away.

“I was scared,” El admits.

She had thought about it for days before she actually decided to cautiously show herself to Hopper, ready to fight and run if she had to. Her heart was racing while she quietly walked a few feet behind him all the way to the road. What if he turned her in to the bad men?

El couldn’t explain it, but she realized almost immediately when she got into his car that he wasn’t going to do that. It didn’t take but that first night with Hopper to realize that she trusted him.

“I’m glad you are safe,” Mike finally manages to say. He tries to sniffle quietly, but El hears it. She looks up and sees that he’s crying. She pulls herself up and before Mike has the chance to, she wipes his face with both of her hands and presses her lips to his cheek, lingering for a moment.

She pulls away and nuzzles her head against his neck.

Mike hugs her with a soft, “I’m sorry.” He shouldn’t be the one crying.

“It’s okay,” she promises, and Mike knows she means it. “Can we still go to Snowball?” El asks after a few moments.

Mike smiles because he can’t believe that she still remembers. “Do you think Hopper will let you?”

“I will hide all his cigarettes and beer until he says yes.” El smiles up at him.

“Good plan,” Mike laughs.

It’s a few minutes later when El speaks. She doesn’t know why she says anything, because she wasn’t really ready to talk about it, but for some reason, she just really needed Mike to know.

“I met my sister.” She turns her wrist over against his chest to point at her tattoo. “Eight… Kali,” she corrects after she says it. “And my name is Jane.”

She said it so casually that Mike doesn’t know how to respond.

“Well, my mama named me Jane,” she explains, sensing Mike’s confusion. “The bad men hurt mama and now Kali is hurting the bad men.”

“Kali is like you?” Mike finally asks, trying to understand things one step at a time.

El nods. “Like me, but different.”

“How did you find her?”

“Mama showed me where to find her in Chicago.”

“You went to Chicago?” Mike questions, clearly surprised and wondering how she got away from Hopper for that long.

“Yes. I shouldn’t have gone,” El answers, repeating the same thing she had told Hopper the night before, though she had left out some of the details that time.

Mike could tell that El didn’t want to talk about it anymore, so he didn’t press it, though he did ask, “Do you want me to call you Jane?” It was her name after all, and he would call her anything she wanted.

El shook her head no. “I like El better.”

“Jane is nice, but I like El too,” he agrees.

She slides her hand down her chest and wraps it around him to hug him closer. They are both quiet for another few minutes, just enjoying being with each other when El’s stomach growls loudly, making them both laugh.

“Maybe we _should_ get up,” Mike suggests, though he really doesn’t want to let her go.

El sighs and tries to remember the last thing she ate. The past 24 hours were really a blur, but she thinks that it was a candy bar that she pulled from the gas station on their way to find the bad men.

“I guess so,” she reluctantly agrees, rolling off of Mike, stretching her legs out in the bed.

Mike climbs out of bed on the far side, and El swings her legs over the other side, nearly stepping on Hopper’s legs.

“Oh!” El squeals in surprise when she sees him.

“Good morning,” he deadpans, pulling himself up to a sitting position.

“I- I didn’t know you were back,” El stutters, still clearly surprised.

That much had been obvious.

“Mm-hm,” Hopper replies.

Mike is scrambling to get out the door. He hadn’t exactly followed the rules Hopper had laid down for the two of them before he had left, and he really didn’t want to be on Hopper’s bad side right away. The punches that he threw at him yesterday were probably enough to already land him on that list.

“I’m hungry. Breakfast?” El asks innocently, wondering how much of their conversation he had heard. Maybe he had been asleep…

Hopper stands up behind her and places a hand on her shoulder to stop her at the door.

“We’ll talk later,” he warns softly, following her down the hallway to the living room.  


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn’t hard for El to manage to avoid Hopper for the rest of the day at Joyce’s house. Her friends kept her busy in conversation, though it was mostly just El listening to their stories about life over the past year without her.

El and Will had their first real conversation too. It wasn’t anything more than a simple introduction, but she hoped to get to know him more soon. Despite their friend’s enthusiasm that morning, the two of them were both still pretty tired. El asked where Max was- she had wanted to meet her properly too, but her friends informed her that she had to go home already as, “Her parents were _really_ pissed.”

Joyce quickly realized that her fridge had been emptied out and replaced with a dead Demodog, so Hopper left and picked up donuts, juice, and coffee for breakfast.

Somehow Joyce appeared to be relatively okay after all she’d gone through. Hopper knew that she was most likely still in shock from the previous night’s events. She would break down in private when everyone was gone, and she was left alone to process the last few days.

After breakfast, Hopper made the kids help clean up the house, which didn’t take too long with all the extra hands. All of Will’s drawings went in the trash, and they patched the Byers’ window with a temporary sheet of plastic. The Demodog was turned to ash in a small fire pit in the backyard, despite Dustin’s many objections.

Once the house was cleaned, Hopper didn’t have any more excuses to stay. He told the kids that they needed to get home too. Will needed to rest. And it was obvious that Joyce did too.

When it was time to say goodbye, El noticed that Hopper was watching her and Mike out of the corner of his eye. Either he wasn’t very good at pretending to not be looking, or he was making it obvious on purpose.

“I don’t want to go,” El says quietly, hugging Mike as if she may not ever see him again.

“I don’t want you to either,” he agrees. El pulls back to study his face carefully. She wants to kiss him so badly…

“El, come on. Let’s go,” Hopper’s voice interrupts, as if he could read her thoughts.

She sighs and gives Mike one last hug instead, burying her face in the crook of his neck. This was the first time she’d realized just how tall he had gotten over the past year.

She turns towards Hopper but doesn’t move to get in the car.  Her fingers lace themselves between Mike’s, unwilling to let him go without a promise. “When can I see him again?”

Hopper looks at her, and she can tell that he’s a little surprised that she would confront him about it right now.

“I don’t know,” he sighs. “Soon.”

Hopper turns to get into the vehicle, signaling that it was the end of that conversation.

El felt like she could cry at that response, and Mike sensed it immediately. “Soon, okay?” Mike repeats with confidence, tightening his fingers around hers. He didn’t know just how much El hated that word. Hopper knew she hated it, but he didn’t have a better answer for her.

El nods anyway, too tired to fight right now. “Okay,” she whispers.

Mike walks her to the car door, and she reluctantly climbs in, letting of his hand. She wants to believe Hopper and Mike, but she isn’t sure if she can.

Hopper backs the car out of the driveway, and El turns to watch Mike disappear. Again.

When they start traveling, Hopper sighs and says, “Kid, start talking.”

“About what?” El answers with a slightly harder edge than she had intended.

“Oh, I don’t know. How about all of the things that you left out of this conversation last night?”

El doesn’t respond. She doesn’t want to talk about it right now when all she could do was think about Mike.

“When can I see him again?” she counters instead.

“I’m not talking about that,” Hopper groans.

“When?” she repeats anyway.

“If I give you a date, then you need to tell me the whole story about where you’ve been. Chicago, your _sister_ , everything,” he compromises, trying not to lose his patience. El doesn’t agree, but she does turn to look at him.  “I’m not mad,” Hopper reiterates, glancing over at her with a sigh just as he had the night before. “I just need to know if you’re in danger.”

“I’m not,” El answers simply, turning to look back out her window.

“Saturday, okay? How about next Saturday?”

“In less than one week?” El confirms carefully, her heart racing at the thought.

“Yes. Less than one week.” Hopper isn’t sure if it really would be safe, but he would have to figure out a way to make it work somehow.

“Okay,” El nods, feeling a little better. Before she could start talking, static interrupts them and a voice comes over Hopper’s radio.

“Come in, Hop.” Hopper glances at El when he answers, and she knows he’s asking her to stay quiet.

“Yeah, Flo. What is it?”

“I know it’s Sunday, but I figured you might be working with all that’s going on down at the lab,” she begins. Apparently, Flo was working on her usual day off too.

“Uh-huh, what is it?” Hopper asks, expecting to hear about another crisis he was going to have to take care of.

“A-,” Florence shuffles through the papers on her desk for the note. “A Becky Ives called yesterday and again today to speak with you about some missing girl that you were looking for last year when Joyce’s son went missing. She said the girl came to her house but took off. Thinks she might be in trouble.”

El looks guilty but stays quiet.

“Yeah, yeah. Thanks Flo. I’ll take it from here,” Hopper reassures her quickly.

“You need me to send some extra hands out to the lab?” Flo asks since she has his attention.

“No, I’ve got that handled,” he promises. “Thanks again,” he says, ending the conversation.  Hopper glances to El after a minute of silence. “Now it’s your turn to start talking,” he urges. “You went to your Aunt Becky’s in a big truck and then you ran away to go to Chicago. How did you get there?”

“A bus with a dog,” El replies.

He thinks about it for a minute and then understands that she means a Greyhound bus. “And your mama showed you that there was girl like you there in Chicago? How did she do that?” he questions; El’s mother wasn’t exactly a chatterbox these days.

“In her dream circle,” answers El.

Hopper has no idea what that meant, but overall, it didn’t seem like an important detail. He waited for her to go on.

When El didn’t continue to elaborate, he brought up what he could remember from her conversation with Mike instead. “Okay, so you found this girl in Chicago, number Eight,” he continues.

“Kali,” El corrects.

“Right, Kali. And then what did you guys do?”

“Kali and her friends hurt the bad men,” El explains softly.

“I see. Did you meet any of the bad men while you were there?” Hopper asks, trying to get as much detail out of her as possible, even though El was tired and remained relatively uncooperative; it felt like pulling teeth.

“I was supposed to kill him,” she finally details, answering his question. “I couldn’t do it.” She doesn’t explain to him why not.

“But this man saw you? Is he still alive right now?”

El shrugs because she isn’t sure, but she figures that he is.

Hopper looks over and sees her blink back tears. He lets out a sigh of defeat. While he has many more questions and wants more information, her tears force him to stop questioning her like a criminal. After last night, El was already exposed anyway, so in reality, one man in Chicago probably wasn’t that big of a threat compared to the potential trouble here in Hawkins.

A few minutes of silence goes by before El apologizes with a soft, “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Hopper accepts understandingly.

“I took money from Aunt Becky. I want to pay her back,” El sniffles, quickly wiping a tear from her cheek.

“Okay. I’ll uh, I’ll get you a list of weekly chores. How about that?”

“Chores?” El questions, unfamiliar with the word.

“Yes, chores are something you do to earn money. Sort of like working, but around the house. It might be things like sweeping, cleaning your room, washing the dishes,” he explains.

“I would like to do chores.” She nods eagerly, and Hopper can’t help but laugh at the sentence he’s pretty sure no teenage kid has ever uttered before now.

“Alright, kid. I’ll make you a list of chores,” he agrees with a smile.

El smiles back too, finally able to let go of some of her guilt.

 _Chores and seeing Mike on Saturday_ \- she finally had something to look forward to.


End file.
